NEWARK - In the near future, robots could be arriving to assist survivors in natural disaster situations. Student robotics classes created robots that simulated those rescues and put them to the test Saturday.

Twenty-eight teams from Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky competed Saturday at the FIRST Tech Challenge Regional Ohio Competition, sponsored by Central Ohio Technical College and The Ohio State University at Newark and held in the Reese Center.

The teams, made up of students grades 7-12, were judged in the morning on the process they used to design their robot, the design of the software used to control the robots, the engineering log kept by the students and the team's outreach into the community.

"They had to keep track of the whole process in their engineering notebook," event organizer and volunteer Nancy Richards said, explaining what the students would be judged on in the morning and how that impacted teams' overall score.

"The two best robotics teams and the two best overall teams will move on to the state competition," she said, adding that the scoring system is "all kinds of complicated."

Teams competed against each other in the afternoon to try to be one of the top four. Then each of those four teams selected two additional teams to form alliances. These alliances then competed against rival alliances in a series of rounds to try and get the best score of two out of three rounds.

"The top team works with one it's selected in the first round, then competes in the next round with the other team it picked for its alliance," FTC volunteer Cameron Richards said.

The course, approximately six-by-six feet, was split diagonally in half by tape. Four robots were in the field at one time, each completing goals for their respective alliance.

This year's competition theme was "Res-Q." Teams simulated taking survivors to shelters, depositing debris into specific containers and lighting a beacon on the course. For the first 30 seconds, the robots ran autonomously, being directed by programs. The teams operated the robots remotely for the second part of the round.

Team Missing Parts, of Granville, didn't make it to the final round, but did place 12th before the elimination rounds. At one point, Missing Parts was fourth on the score board.

"We faced a lot of design challenges this year, and we had a young team to start with.," Team Captain Alex Chisolm said. "But having the younger kids wasn't as bad as we thought it would be. They picked up the designing and coding fast."

Chisolm added that the team would go straight from the competition to the high school to begin working on the FIRST Robotics Challenge, which kicked off Saturday.

"It's amazing to see what these kids can come up with, just really cool," FTC event organizer and volunteer Jeffrey Richards said.